The Isles of Cinnamon by oshun

Chapter 1

“Mmm! I am starving.” Tuor said entering the large kitchen through the back door. The cold drizzle of a late fall day in the Valley of Tumladen made the warmth and fragrance of a roast dinner and baking all the more welcome. Idril, pink-cheeked in the heat from the ovens with a few locks of golden hair escaping from a starched white cap, appeared more an incomparably pretty kitchen maid than the lady of this lordly house.

Tuor wondered as he often did at the strangeness of fate that he should find himself the lord of all this, the husband of this precious elven princess. Looking pleased with being the instigator of the purposeful bustle surrounding her, Idril smiled widely at him, while continuing to fuss ineffectually over an arrangement of more than a dozen tiny crystal and porcelain bowls of condiments and garnishes on a large silver platter. Eärendil beamed at his father from his perch on a tall stool, stuffing his tiny red rosebud of a mouth from a plate of crackers and cheese.

“What’s cooking?” Tuor asked, throwing his cape over a chair near the doorway before he grabbed his son and swung him onto one hip.

“You must mean the roast pork with mushroom sauce?” Idril replied. “Or you might have smelled the herb-crusted potatoes with garlic. They should be nearly finished by now.” By the self-satisfied way she lifted her chin one might have thought she had prepared the meal herself, instead of only supervising the head cook and her two apprentices while she fiddled with the fanciful presentation of jewel-toned jellies and marmalades.

“All of that sounds wonderful. But I thought I smelled pastry baking.”

“Baked apple tarts with cinnamon, honey, nuts and cream!” crowed precocious Eärendil, already well-versed in the description of foods, an activity from which his mother derived such pleasure. Tuor mused that Eärendil was getting older; perhaps he ought to take the boy along with him more often.

“Grandmother Anairë’s recipe,” Idril added. “It’s the last of the cinnamon though. I have no idea how or if we will ever find any more. But there was not enough left for a really big feast. So, I reckoned that we might as well enjoy it now.”

“Can’t we plant cinnamon in the kitchen garden?” Eärendil asked.

“It doesn’t grow in places like this mountain valley which have such cold winters,” Tuor said. “There are islands far to the south of here, where cinnamon grows naturally. Although there are places on the southern mainland where it is cultivated also.”

Eärendil’s eyes opened wide in interest as they always did at the mention of other landscapes, other climes. “Must one sail on the ocean in a big ship to get to the Isles of Cinnamon?”

Not for the first time, Tuor regretted the narrowness of their world for a boy of such intelligence and curiosity. “Oh, yes. I’ve heard from travelers and sailors, that one can often smell the cinnamon eight leagues out to sea.”

“I want to sail there and smell cinnamon on the sea breezes!” Eärendil declared. Tuor exchanged a look with Idril over his son's shoulder. When they had conceived him, they had both questioned their decision to bear a child who would be raised in the isolation and uncertainty of their city.

Idril sighed and forced a wan smile. “Perhaps, little one,” she said. “Perhaps you will someday sail the seas.”

Tuor felt a twinge of hope at her words, as though they held predictive power. He squeezed Eärendil more tightly, before asking, “What is the occasion tonight?”

“Salgant is coming for dinner.”

“Alone I hope?”

“He is not bringing Maeglin, if that is what you mean. We see enough of my cousin at Atar’s table. But I wanted to make everything especially nice. You know how Salgant appreciates a good dinner. He is always a pleasure to entertain.”

Tuor gave a derisive snort before laughing. “All this elegance for Salgant?”

“I do enjoy seeing a man who appreciates hospitality,” she said with a sniff.

“He likes his food well enough, but I am not sure that he wouldn’t be equally well-pleased if it were served to him in a trough.”

“What’s a trough?” asked Eärendil.

“Never mind,” said Idril. “Your usually charming father is being a wicked man tonight.”

Her smile belied her tone. She did not draw back when Tuor pulled her into an ardent kiss, not even when his embrace crushed Eärendil between them causing the boy to squeal in delight while dropping a generous sprinkling of crackers into the bodice of Idril’s dress.

Chapter End Notes

On Cinnamon: I found this interesting reference in checking on the natural occurrence of cinnamon in our world:

Long before they could see land, sailors knew they were getting close when the fragrance of the spice enveloped their ships. “When one is downwind of the island , one can smell cinnamon eight leagues out to sea,” a Dutch captain reported. The British bishop and composer Reginald Heber immortalized this in his 1819 “Missionary Hymn” with a line that begins, “What though the spicy breezes blow soft o’er Ceylon’s Isle….” Global Flavors, Local Tastes, SpiceLines, 2004.